Concorde pear?

[mosstrooper]

Hi all, does anyone have a Concorde pear? These are some of the first ones i've had from mine and they look great but, they have been in the fruit bowl for over a week and go from rock hard to soft and bland tasting while staying green unlike the Williams for instance. Do these look like Concorde or am i doing something wrong?
Thanks Pete

[FB.]

They look a bit fat for Concorde although the skin colour looks about right. Different climates, soils and rootstocks can affect how fruit looks and tastes. The Concorde pears that I grow look similar to Conference in size and shape but with considerably less russet and more of the yellow-green skin colour.

The most notable things about my Concorde are that it is painfully slow growing and annoyingly light cropping. The fruit is tasty enough though.
Are you sure you've picked them at the perfect time? Just lift the pear up by its base until it's upside-down and if its stalk lets go of the branch it's ready.

A properly ripened pear should not go 'crunch' when you bite it. In fact, it is said that a well-grown and well-ripened pear can be eaten almost silently, apart from slurps of the juice running down your chin when you bite it.

The best way to ripen pears that I've yet discovered is to bring a few - four or five - out of (cool, dark) storage at a time and put them on a sunny windowsill for several days.

After several days, gently squeeze the top near the stalk to see if it's softening slightly.
If they're slightly softening near the stalk, eat the first one.

The first one will be very slightly under-ripe but good enough. The next couple of days they'll be just right. The following couple of days the last couple will need eating.

I recommend cutting pears into quarters with a knife. You can then see any slight browning/rotting of the core due to being over-ripe from too long on the windowsill. You can use that to adjust how long you leave subsequent batches on the windowsill and how many pears to put out in each batch.

[mosstrooper]

Thanks for the reply FB and nice to see you back. This is growing as an oblique cordon and doing well. This is the first year of fruiting and i had to thin the fruitlets hard so perhaps not Concorde after all. I have just been down the garden and picked two more pears which, like the previous four came away at a touch. Perhaps the others were picked before being properly ripe so we shall see

[Hereford fruit grower]

I've never grown Concorde. With the warming of the English climate, I find it possible to grow select varieties that used to be labelled 'for favoured areas only'. A few can be miffy, i.e. Beurre Bosc, Beurre Superfin, but I find that all the others crop heavily and regularly. I'm lucky to have a perfect soil and rainfall for pears, though it's not as warm as Kent.

In the past, I didn't pick many pears early enough. Some went brown in the core relatively soon after ripening, i.e. softening.

I find that pears very rarely start falling from the tree when underripe, unlike apples. But they can still be safely picked quite hard and stored.

Picking them a week or so earlier than you think is wise seems to improve the process. It gives you a bit longer to eat them, i.e. the time between when they go soft and when they are brown internally.

In 2018, all bar two have been delicious. Exceptions:
1 an unknown variety (Keepers mixed up their varieties badly with my order) and it goes from hard to overripe within a fortnight
2 a tree sold to me as Nouveau Poiteau but there seem to be two pears in commerce under this name and I probably have the less good one.

Technically, I can't be sure that Josephine de Malines will be delicious, because it's still on the tree. But it's a proven variety, so I'm sure it'll be ready for 'silent eating' by Xmas or New Year.

Good to see FB back. I found his older posts very interesting.

[chrisdb]

They look a bit fat for Concorde although the skin colour looks about right. Different climates, soils and rootstocks can affect how fruit looks and tastes. The Concorde pears that I grow look similar to Conference in size and shape but with considerably less russet and more of the yellow-green skin colour.

The most notable things about my Concorde are that it is painfully slow growing and annoyingly light cropping. The fruit is tasty enough though.

Same here shape wise and colour-wise, very similar to Conference. I find the taste though a bit more like Comice than pure Conference. Mine are fairly russetted though, and the fruit is quite small unless heavily thinned. I haven't had any problems getting them to ripen: I normally pick them when the skin turns a bit yellower and that seems to work OK for me.

The tree does set quite a lot of fruit though for me, given its small size. I agree with you that it's the complete opposite of vigorous, although the Beth pear I have is the same.

I thought it was partly the dry corner of my garden being less than ideal for quince rootstock, and also the fact both are modern varieties, so I tried Pyrodwarf to see if extra vigour would help. I have a Beurre Sterckman (an old variety) on Pyrodwarf, but after 3 years that's also still growing at an almost glacial pace. It puts on about 10cm a year, compared to feet of growth per year for the apples I have on both mm106 and m25.

I'm beginning to think that pears are just a pain in the *** to grow.

[FB.]

......they can still be safely picked quite hard and stored.

Picking them a week or so earlier than you think is wise seems to improve the process. It gives you a bit longer to eat them, i.e. the time between when they go soft and when they are brown internally.

I agree that slightly early picking can prolong storage life.

[FB.]

....I'm beginning to think that pears are just a pain in the *** to grow....

My pears have been setting less and less fruit each year, to the point where no tree (bush) sets more than a dozen fruits anymore and some don't set any fruit.

There just don't seem to be many bees around at pear blossom time in the last several years.
Apple fruit set is usually not a problem but it probably helps that they flower later than pears, including when the solitary bees start to appear. Solitary bees and bumble bees do the majority of the pollination of my fruit trees.

[Hereford fruit grower]

I'm puzzled by such contrary reports on Pyrodwarf.

As per a past exchange, on this good soil I think Pyrodwarf reinvents the 20th.C problem of monster pear trees. There are perry pear trees on the Hfds/Worcs/Glos. border the height of a 6-8 storey building. One has no room for trees even half that height of tree in a normal garden. I find quince C vigorous enough, although for extremely slow varieties I'd use quince A. The four trees I was sold on Pyrodwarf make 1-1.5 metres/year of extension growth which is totally OTT.

I don't get as much overpollination on pears as apples. However, except for the lowest-cropping varieties - Beurre Bosc and Beurre Superfin - I usually remove 10-75% of the fruit. This is less thinning than most of the apples need, though.

[chrisdb]

I'm puzzled by such contrary reports on Pyrodwarf.

I've been surprised how unvigorous Pyrodwarf seems in my garden. And it's not that in general nothing will grow. As I said, I have a few very happy apple trees, lots of happy soft fruit, and various ornamental shrubs which grow normally.

Most of my garden has fairly heavy top-soil which gets sandier after the first 40 - 50 cm until, after about 2m, you start to hit sand-stone bedrock. I find the contrast between the top-soil and sub-soil a bit odd, but I've dug enough holes to know that's how it is throughout most of our garden.

The corner where the pears are growing is the sunniest but also the corner with the lightest and most well-drained soil. Having said that, I have blackcurrants, raspberries, and gooseberries which crop well within meters of the unvigorous pear trees.

I also have a medlar on Quince A in that same well-drained corner, the same age as some of the older pear trees, whose trunk is probably 2 - 3 times thicker than the pears on Quince A.

Maybe it's the climate? But we're in the centre of a town in Nottinghamshire, which isn't that far north and is moderated by a decent heat-island effect.

I'm almost at the point of despair when it comes to growing pear trees instead of pear twigs. I wonder if I should try full-on Pyrus rootstock as a final attempt...

[FB.]

Over the years I have noticed with pears, apples and plums that some rootstock-scion combinations grow differently to what you'd expect.

@chrisdb: which varieties are you trying to grow on Pyrodwarf?
Is it possible that a naughty or incompetent nursery sent out the wrong rootstock?
Can you take a picture of your Pyrodwarf graft union?

[chrisdb]

Over the years I have noticed with pears, apples and plums that some rootstock-scion combinations grow differently to what you'd expect.

@chrisdb: which varieties are you trying to grow on Pyrodwarf?
Is it possible that a naughty or incompetent nursery sent out the wrong rootstock?
Can you take a picture of your Pyrodwarf graft union?

It was a Beurre Sterckman from Keepers:

https://www.keepers-nursery.co.uk/fr...rre-sterckmans

They don't seem to be stocking it anymore, but they were selling it one year and I thought I'd give it a try. I believe it is the right variety - it's three years old now and it did produce a couple of fruit one year that looked right. It also shows a lot of autumn colour, which matches what others have written about Beurre Sterckmans.

As to whether it's actually on something else (e.g. Quince), it's possible I suppose. I also have a young Asian pear supposedly on Pyrodwarf, and I'm more confident of that because I think Asian pears are normally not that compatible with Quince, so I guess I could compare what they look like under the graft union.

I'll try to take a picture tomorrow as well.

[FB.]

It was a Beurre Sterckman from Keepers:

https://www.keepers-nursery.co.uk/fr...rre-sterckmans

They don't seem to be stocking it anymore, but they were selling it one year and I thought I'd give it a try. I believe it is the right variety - it's three years old now and it did produce a couple of fruit one year that looked right. It also shows a lot of autumn colour, which matches what others have written about Beurre Sterckmans.

As to whether it's actually on something else (e.g. Quince), it's possible I suppose. I also have a young Asian pear supposedly on Pyrodwarf, and I'm more confident of that because I think Asian pears are normally not that compatible with Quince, so I guess I could compare what they look like under the graft union.

I'll try to take a picture tomorrow as well.

I rate Keepers quite highly so I doubt that you've been conned.

I find some of the more unusual fruit varieties seem to have lost their vigour, making them prone to graft failure or they grow for a few years then just wither away inexplicably.

I suspect it's because the mother tree is so old that it has acquired many viruses and other diseases which weaken it. Sometimes it's incompatibility between graft and scion.

Some people might say that the nursery should offer only virus-free varieties but with very old or rare varieties there are so few trees to choose from that the nursery has to just go with what it can source.

[Lardman]

Beth, Onward, Concorde and Winter Neils all on pyrodwarf all with no real growth since planting. I was hoping they were just getting established as I specifically upgraded the rootstock to cope with the less than ideal conditions.

The plan this year was to buy a tree on quince C from a local nursery to compare the growth rates.

[It never rains..it pours]

Beth, Onward, Concorde and Winter Neils all on pyrodwarf all with no real growth since planting. I was hoping they were just getting established as I specifically upgraded the rootstock to cope with the less than ideal conditions.

The plan this year was to buy a tree on quince C from a local nursery to compare the growth rates.

Lardman, any views on the magazine offer this month of BOGOF duo trees
https://www.yougarden.com/cat-duotre...mily-trees.htm
Im interested mainly in the pear but having read your comments above wondering how well you think drawfing will cope with clay (not waterlogged) soil

[Lardman]

Lardman, any views on the magazine offer this month of BOGOF duo trees
https://www.yougarden.com/cat-duotre...mily-trees.htm
Im interested mainly in the pear but having read your comments above wondering how well you think drawfing will cope with clay (not waterlogged) soil

I can't comment on clay I'm afraid as I grow in a sandpit

I don't think any of the pairings are particularly good though and unless I am missing something I don't see the actual rootstock mentioned on the pears just "dwarfing". If you're planting for keeps it's worth taking your time and getting things you want, rather than buying what appears cheap at the time but could cost dearly in time.

If I was looking for a duo pear, I'd want an early and a late fruiting, something dependable and something unusual on a rootstock to fill 2-3 times the space I had available when fully grown.